July 17, 2009
Cutting costs was never the point, expanding government control was

Posted at 1:57 pm, in: Health Care
Tags: Douglas Elmendorf

CBO announces that versions of the health care bills coming out of the hill will INCREASE costs, not curb them as has been stated as one of the primary goals of the health care legislation:

Congress’s chief budget scorekeeper cast a new cloud over Democratic efforts to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, telling lawmakers Thursday that the main proposals being considered would fail to contain costs — one of the primary goals — and could actually worsen the problem of rapidly escalating medical spending.

“We do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount,” Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, told the Senate Budget Committee. “On the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health-care costs,” he added.

When President Barack Obama and lawmakers set out earlier this year to revamp the health-care system, they had two main objectives: Expand access to health insurance and curb runaway costs, not just for the government but the economy as a whole.

This was never about controlling costs, it was always about expanding coverage and, in effect, expanding government and government control over the private sector and the private individual. The goal of this health care bill is nothing short of a government takeover of health care. The more dependent we are on government the more they can buy our votes.

I have said it before and I’ll say it again: We are not entitled to health care or health insurance. That is not, I repeat not, one of our God-given rights. This was NEVER authorized in the Constitution and should be stopped on those grounds alone.

It is unfortunate that some people are without insurance. Some of those people simply don’t want insurance. Some of those people don’t have their priorities straight and would rather have a $400 IPhone than pay insurance premiums. Some of those people are illegal aliens. And, some of those people are just poor. The thing about the legitimately poor is that they are already covered and could never be refused by a hospital for emergency care, anyway.

Health care may need reform, but what is being offered right now is not the kind of reform it needs. The reform being advocated now will not lower costs, it will hide costs as the government picks up the tab. And, by “the government” I mean individual taxpayers. And, they can talk all they want about just “taxing the rich,” but at some point they’ll be taxing you, too. If you smoke, they’re already taxing you for children’s health care. After all, nothing in life is free.